Weird Science keeps its testosterone steady after fighting with quails

But only if there's not an audience of Japanese quails at hand.

It's not how you do, it's who sees you doing it. We tend to associate testosterone with facial hair and deep voices, but it also controls behavior in both sexes across the animal kingdom. One bit of behavior it seems to control is a response to conflict: winners experience a testosterone surge, while losers see their levels drop. Now, some researchers have looked into that response in more detail, and uncovered a rather important feature of it: it seems to be tied to the public embarrassment of losing a fight in front of an audience.

The authors were using the Japanese quail to track the testosterone response. (Because when you think of testosterone-laced conflicts, you immediately think "Japanese Quail," right?) When a fight went on in private, a testosterone surge actually appeared in both the winners and losers. But when an audience of other quail were present, the losers saw their testosterone levels drop. Obviously, we'll want to check this in other species to determine if quail are especially sensitive to public humiliation. Of course, I'm not sure how you'd conduct the test with humans, who would always know that the researchers were watching.

We're not giving you this liver unless we're convinced you're going to keep using it. Since organ donation remains relatively uncommon, transplant centers need to prioritize who gets in line first for one of the limited number of body parts available. Now, someone's gone through and surveyed hospital administrators about how they establish who gets a new liver. And, in the obvious result of the week, they found that if you're over 80, obese, and in jail, the liver's going to someone else. Less obvious was that there was little agreement over what made someone a good candidate for getting an organ, or even which criteria the public might consider controversial.

Lies on the Internet produce hypochondria and a fear of renewable energy. Given that people have become convinced that many aspects of modern life, from Wi-Fi to cell phones, cause mysterious ailments, it really shouldn't have surprised me that people are saying that wind turbines make them ill. But, just like the Wi-Fi sensitivity, the mysterious illness doesn't hold up to experimentation. When researchers played sub-audible sound for a control group, none of them reported symptoms. But when a separate group was primed with stories of wind turbine disease taken from the Internet, they reported symptoms when told a sound was playing—whether the researchers turned on the speaker or not.

A separate study found that nearly three-quarters of the health complaints lodged against wind farms in Australia named six facilities that had been targeted by an anti-wind power campaign. And 80 percent of those complaints came after the campaign had added health issues to their complaints about wind power. As a result, the authors call wind farm sickness a "communicable disease," and blame it on the "nocebo effect"—a relative of the placebo effect in which symptoms appear despite a lack of treatment.

Extinct species can be deadly. Researchers have discovered a novel source of data on the past range of some shark species in the Pacific. The natives of the Gilbert Islands made some vicious weapons by lashing shark teeth to wood (shown below). Several of these weapons have ended up in museums, and researchers have gone back to identify the species that gave up its teeth so that others could engage in violence. It turns out that two of those species have gone locally extinct in the last few hundred years, and were never even known to have inhabited the reefs around the islands.

I could tell it was you by your bad breath. The chemicals circulating in your body are a complex mix of everything from your metabolic state to the bacteria that hitchhike along on your life. Researchers have been thinking for a while that they also might reflect your disease state, suggesting the possibility that we could eventually have a breath test for cancer. That's still in the works, but researchers looking into the possibility found something else: the participants had a distinct chemical signal they called a "breath print." (Not in the article itself, mind you, since peer reviewers might not let them get away with it; the term only appears in the press release.) It's only there for a brief second before dissipating, but we probably shouldn't expect that reality will deter script writers from making this a crime drama plot point.

Instead of quail fights, I would like to see academic fights. Much more poo flung, much more humiliation.

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Of course, I'm not sure how you'd conduct the test with humans, who would always know that the researchers were watching.

Haven't they gotten around that elsewhere? I'm guessing, but if you say that subjects will be monitored randomly and then tire them out by mass experiments chances are that they will start to behave as if unmonitored. (It may take a long while.)

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we probably shouldn't expect that reality will deter script writers from making this a crime drama plot point.

Alien Resurrection used it as a plot point 1997. The base commander Perez used breath analysis for ID; later the android Call uses a set of synthetic breath samples to get access to the cell holding the first healthy Ripley clone.

About the quail: That seems a smart evolutionary strategy rather than shame. If you've just proven yourself not to be a good fighter, that would be a bad time to have your testosterone levels let you pick a fight with someone else.

About the quail: That seems a smart evolutionary strategy rather than shame. If you've just proven yourself not to be a good fighter, that would be a bad time to have your testosterone levels let you pick a fight with someone else.

About the quail: That seems a smart evolutionary strategy rather than shame. If you've just proven yourself not to be a good fighter, that would be a bad time to have your testosterone levels let you pick a fight with someone else.

Doesn't predict the difference in different social situations.

Situation 1: No others present. Testosterone was high during fight, stays high a bit longer. Maybe in case the known fighter decides to pile it on.

Situation 2: Others present. Bring down testosterone level quickly, lest you pick a fight with one of the others and lose again.

Given that people have become convinced that many aspects of modern life, from Wi-Fi to cell phones, cause mysterious ailments, it really should have surprised me that people are saying that wind turbines make them ill.

Having a government study into the health effects of wind farms and having the finding of no effects haven't stopped the federal opposition here(Liberal party) of promoting the idea they do cause ill effects and calling for a new study when they win office (they will be the next Australian government in september)

http://waubrafoundation.com.au/~waubra/ ... MyOA%3D%3D"the following serious medical conditions have been identified in people living, working, or visiting within 10km of operating wind turbine developments. The onset of these conditions corresponds directly with the operation of wind turbines:

It seems it would be easy to test the testosterone thing in humans. Just send the scientists to UHC fights and use blood samples from before and after. Since I'd be surprised if they weren't already being tested for steroids and other drugs, it wouldn't seem to be that big of a deal.

About the quail: That seems a smart evolutionary strategy rather than shame. If you've just proven yourself not to be a good fighter, that would be a bad time to have your testosterone levels let you pick a fight with someone else.

Doesn't predict the difference in different social situations.

Situation 1: No others present. Testosterone was high during fight, stays high a bit longer. Maybe in case the known fighter decides to pile it on.

Situation 2: Others present. Bring down testosterone level quickly, lest you pick a fight with one of the others and lose again.